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NASA Considers Abandoning ISS

Posted by michael on from the okay-who-took-my-parachute dept.

mbstone writes "MSNBC is reporting that NASA is threatening to mothball the International Space Station unless Russia coughs up its share of the money for maintenance and support missions. NASA is now making "contingency plans" to leave the station unoccupied for as long as a year. What I want to know is, why a contingency plan? Didn't NASA already have a plan in place? Are U.S. taxpayers going to pay millions extra to develop new mothballing equipment and procedures that could have been designed-in at far less cost?? Also, I would be glad to house-sit, I use very little oxygen."

2 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If NASA is serious by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Sending them isn't a big deal, it's bringing them back that bothers me.

  2. ISS = political boondoggle by asfasmcdas · · Score: 1, Redundant

    The ISS can best be understood by looking at its history. It was conceived amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union and related worries that and underpaid Russian space scientists would sell their services to Iran,Iraq, North Korea etc. and assist them in their missile and nuclear programs.
    It is a tremendous engineering feat but it represents a difference in degree rather than kind when compared with Skylab or Mir.
    I took an astronomy course a couple of years ago. The professor teaching it had served as chief scientist on the Hubble Space Telescope project. He mentioned during the course that the only truly useful and unique function of the ISS would be as an isolation lab for handling samples returned from Mars. To read some of his other reflections on his time dealing with NASA I can highly recommend his book.
    Hubble Wars - Eric Chaisson